package design

Those vintage, so-called "vernacular" packaged food boxes, cans and labels from the '40s and '50s - when supermarkets were on the rise - were, in fact, designed by designers in design departments. Take a closer look at these package designs.

Creative packaging design takes a lot of work to perfect. Read up on it in the Handmade Packaging Workshop book by Rachel Wiles. This book explores explores innovation, design, and the beautiful aesthetic of handcrafted packaging. Get it here. Do you have a great idea for creative packaging for your favorite drink? Have you...

Back in 2011 (oh so long ago), I began a series of "lost designers." The first and only entry was on Gustav Jensen, the Danish born designer whose work was elegantly streamlined and daringly multidisciplinary. There will be more in my series, but for now a reprise of sorts. Here is the original post,...

In the pre-computer days, comps were painted or drawn, or sometimes collaged, in rough form. Art school emphasized hand skills, lettering with brush and gouache. The following painted “sketches”—from a collection of over 50 found in LA by my colleague and friend Jim Heimann of Taschen Books—are either student work for a packaging exercise,...

The United States Postal Service has made it so easy to mail a letter. Why shouldn’t we citizens keep the economically troubled USPS in business? The handy stick-em stamps are much better than the lick-em variety. What’s more the stamp designs have gotten so much better. How can anyone resist peeling a Romare Bearden...

In the book Dime-Store Alchemy, poet Charles Simic captures the essence of artist Joseph Cornell in verse like a close encounter of the third kind. Several weeks ago, I was lucky enough to catch three Eastern European poets duke it out over the merits of Polish writer, translator and poet Czesław Miłosz. The line up...